Money Fail
Paying attention to your money is by far one of the best things you can do for your financial situation. That’s because what gets measured, matters, and the things you focus on improving usually do improve.
Unfortunately, the reverse is not the case. Things you ignore don’t go away. Instead, they often fester and get worse.
Like my finances for the past month.
Turning a Blind Eye
You don’t want to see my desk right now. It looks someone backed up a dump truck to it and unloaded the contents of a document retention center on it.
Seriously. I have no idea what’s on there, or what’s going on with my money right now.
Luckily, I have all of my bills automated except for car insurance and Sprint (although Sprint is supposed to be – maybe it worked this month — I sure don’t know!)
I’ve just been so busy lately that everything else has fallen by the wayside, even much of my sleep. And that’s bad.
Paying the price
The price of disorganization can be high. There are missed deadlines and opportunities, extra fees, and delayed plans.
For me the strangest part is that I literally have no idea what I’ve spent this month, or on what. And I don’t know if the money sitting in my checking account is available to spend. I also haven’t sent anything extra to the mortgage (although my husband has, yay!)
All in all, it’s just very disconcerting.
But I’ll dig out, and if nothing else, I now appreciate even more how much paying attention to your money can do.
What about you? Have you ever lost your desk under a pile of paperwork?
I used to be this way at work. Now, I make myself clean everything up at the end of the day before I leave. I’ve been doing it for a few months and it’s actually gotten automatic. A couple of times when I thought ‘Ah, never mind’ I actually get anxiety and have to do it anyways. Getting organized is easy. Staying organized is what takes time, but I guarantee if you make it a habit, you’ll be much better at it.
I normally have a small stack of papers on my desk (both at home and at work) but never something like this. And it’s not normal at all for me to have no idea how much I’m spending! Normally I track that all the time.
Found you through Women’s Money Week. You don’t want to see my desk right now, and yes, there are all kinds of tax-related paperwork on there that needs to be dealt with. Hope to tackle it this weekend!
Thanks for coming on over from WMW. Hope you’re enjoying the week :)
(And I’m glad I”m not alone on the paperwork thing. I haven’t even though about taxes though! Filing an extension I think.)
I have the important things squared away, but simple filing is something I have a backlog of. Have lots to do in terms of filing things right now! Also have a ton going on overall big picture these days, so it’s a matter of competing priorities. Sometimes, we have to give on something.
Yeah I guess that’s true, we can’t do everything all of the time!
Yes, but mostly reward credit cards that I wanted to sign up for. So it wasn’t a horrible loss. I consider my desk untidy, but organized. If you were to look at it though, it looks like a mess…
Sadly mine is both untidy and disorganized.
My desk is also very dumped on. I try to organize it at least once a week, but it always seems to get unorganized again. I think I’ll try Money Beagle’s suggestion to clean and organize every day before I leave.
In a normal month I clean up about every 7-10 days, which seems to be the happy medium for me.
I can’t stand having my desk unorganized – and neither can my wife. The worst part is that if I don’t clean it up, my wife will try to, and just end up making things harder for me to find!
Heh, sounds like two good reasons to keep it clean :)
One of the things that always is a pleasant surprise to me though whenever I have to undergo a “dig out) (obviously there are lots of negatives) – but on the bright side – it always takes less time to clean everything out than I think it will. It reminds me of the importance of batching tasks – because everything gets done so much more efficiently that way.
That’s good, and you’re right about the importance of batching. For me, I’m just relieved when it’s finally done!
I actually organize my desk every Friday before I leave work. There is something psychologically fulfilling about knowing my stuff is organized when I show up to work on Monday (or Saturday during busy season).
Sounds like you have an excellent habit :)
I fail at the desk pile miserably. Which is probably why I opt out of as many paper statements and bills as possible. At least being able to automate things makes it easier for me to not clean.
I can’t seem to bring myself to opt out of the paper statements, but I can see where that would be a good idea :)